The global nature of the World Wide Web (WWW) has given rise to the need for localizing the contents of Web pages for the specific language skills of a given user. Localization refers to the process of altering a document or program so that it is appropriate for the area in which it is used. For example, if the area in which a document is used is the German language, then when a user requests a Web page, the contents of the Web page are displayed in German.
In currently existing systems, as illustrated in FIG. 1, a Web page document written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language, a markup language used for documents on the WWW) is requested from a client computer system (client 100) via a client application such as a Web browser 102. A user enters a uniform resource locator (URL) specifying an address for the particular document. A locale is determined for the user's computer system, and a document specific to the locale, as determined by the locale-specific URL 114, is determined. The URL is sent to a Web server (server). The server has multiple copies of the HTML document 106, 108, 110, each tailored to a specific language, or locale. Using the locale-specific URL, the Web server retrieves the HTML document 112 for the locale indicated by the URL from a repository comprising the locale-specific HTML document. The locale-specific HTML document is returned to the client, and the localized content 116 is communicated to the client.
There are various problems associated with this method. First, the content developer must create an HTML document for each existing locale. Secondly, the content developer must keep the various localized copies synchronized, wherein edits to the contents of a Web page must be reflected in all of the HTML documents. Third, if the user requests a different locale setting, the browser must fetch a new copy of the HTML document.